Strike Vote

The NASA bargaining team has reached an impasse with NAIT, and needs your vote for a strike mandate. A strike mandate empowers the bargaining team to call a strike if NAIT continues to insist on a collective agreement that doesn't address the needs of NASA members.

What is a strike vote?

A positive strike vote gives the bargaining team leverage.

It tells the employer our members are united and serious, and it increases pressure to reach a fair deal at the table. Historically, a strong strike mandate often encourages meaningful bargaining and can reduce the likelihood that job action is ever required.

Your bargaining team is committed to achieving a collective agreement through bargaining if possible. A strong strike vote makes this more likely.

Why should you support a strike mandate?

NAIT is proposing to significantly degrade our benefits package with a new formulary system.

NAIT is demanding that we give up our comprehensive benefits package in exchange for a formulary system. A formulary system will eliminate many drugs from coverage, and put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor.

Read more about formulary systems.

A formulary system represents a significant downgrade in medical security and an effective reduction in take-home pay.

Moving to a formulary system shifts financial risk and medical costs from the employer to the employee.

I. Formulary System: A Significant Downgrade in Medical Benefits
Restriction of Choice

The move to a formulary shifts decision-making away from clinical necessity and towards cost control. (Huskamp & Keating, 2005, p. 663).

Negative Health Outcomes
  • Formulary restrictions are “associated with reduced medication adherence and negative clinical outcomes” (Park et al., 2017, p. 893).
  • Across reviewed studies, 50.6% of measured patient outcomes were negative or unfavorable following formulary restrictions (Park et al., 2017, p. 893).
II. Formulary System: A Downgrade in Pay
Shifting Costs Onto Workers
  • Adoption of a public formulary reduced plan-paid prescriptions by 23.8% within one year in a large Canadian private drug plan covering approximately 66,000 unionized workers and dependents (Cassels & Law, 2019, pp. E472–E473).
  • The authors caution that reduced plan-paid prescriptions do not reflect reduced clinical need, but instead indicate prescriptions that were no longer covered by the plan. Affected workers may have paid out of pocket, relied on spousal coverage, or discontinued therapy altogether (Cassels & Law, 2019, p. E477).
Punishing People Who Need Medication
  • Evidence from Canada and comparable systems shows that increased out-of-pocket drug costs lead patients to delay or forgo prescribed medications, even when clinically indicated (Law et al., 2018, pp. E63–E70).
  • Cost-related nonadherence disproportionately affects individuals with chronic illness, converting health status into a persistent wage penalty (Law et al., 2018, pp. E63–E70).
Unlimited Financial Exposure for NASA Members
  • When medications are excluded under a formulary, costs fall entirely outside the plan, removing effective spending caps and exposing workers to uncapped costs for necessary treatment (Huskamp & Keating, 2005, p. 664).
III. Citations
  • Cassels, A., & Law, M. (2019). The impact of introducing a formulary into a large private drug plan. CMAJ Open. [PDF]
  • Huskamp, H. A., & Keating, N. L. (2005). Formularies and access. Journal of General Internal Medicine. [PDF]
  • Law, M. R., et al. (2018). The consequences of patient charges for prescription drugs in Canada. CMAJ Open. [PDF]
  • Park, Y., et al. (2017). The effect of formulary restrictions on patient and payer outcomes. Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy. [PDF]
  • Parrish, R. H. (2018). What is a formulary, anyway?. Pharmacy. [PDF]
  • Sydor, A. M., et al. (2024). Modeling the effects of formulary exclusions. Journal of Health Economics and Outcomes Research. [PDF]

We make almost 20% less than we did 10 years ago.

The Alberta government's mandate letter to NAIT (and every other institution) appears to limit what they are allowed to offer to 3% per year for four years. However, there are other ways that our compensation can be improved.

Read more about compensation.

The last time instructional staff saw a wage increase that kept up with inflation was in 2016.

In "real dollar" terms, the average instructor is making almost 20% less than they were 10 years ago.

While other unions across the province appear to have accepted a 3% per year increase, for 4 years, in many cases this is deceiving. Along with other monetary gains, it is not uncommon for grid modifications to occur, giving a larger effective increase. To this end, NASA has made several proposals to NAIT for consideration. All have been rejected by NAIT.)

Grid Step Amounts

Currently, the way the NASA salary grids are configured is unusual. Between each step there are fixed dollar amounts ($3,445). More typically, grid steps are configured with a percentage increase between each step. The percentage method has several advantages, both to the employer and the employee. A fixed percentage is an increasing dollar amount, which incentivizes long-term employment - employees receive larger increases as they move up the grid, recognizing that experience has value and making it increasingly worth it for employees to remain working there.

Additionally, a percentage increase helps to defray inflation as the employee works their way up the grid, since a fixed dollar amount is worth less money every year. As a percentage, our current agreement ranges from 5.3% to 3.1% between steps, and our proposal is to standardize the percentage increase at 5%. This may sound like a lot, but the size of a percentage increase is a function of the overall range (highest salary minus lowest salary) and the number of steps. Regularizing grid steps has already been done for other unions across the province in this round of bargaining, including several classifications of AUPE employees at NAIT.

Removal and Shifting of Steps

Since NAIT’s wages are not truly competitive with industry for the same qualifications, and since NAIT justifiably requires instructors to have some experience prior to working here, virtually no one is hired below step 6. Because these lower steps are effectively unused, we have proposed removing the bottom three steps (steps 3–5). This would shift the existing step 6 salary to become the new step 3, and the current step 17 would become step 14, with new steps 15–17 then added back in.

There are several benefits to this proposal for both NAIT and, obviously, NASA members. For NAIT, it makes hiring more competitive and therefore easier to attract strong candidates. This type of adjustment has also been a feature of several recent negotiations involving unions across the province.

Currently, NASA must approve changes to our benefits package. NAIT wants this restriction significantly weakened.

Article 27.04 reads: "The Institute shall not on its own initiative, alter staff member entitlements under any of the Group Benefits Plan without the express written agreement of the Association."

NAIT wants to water down this article.

NAIT wants to cut off NASA members who are on Long Term Disability and deemed unable to work any occupation from benefits and further LAPP contributions.

Any of us could become disabled at any time. This proposal puts our most vulnerable members at risk.

NAIT wants to change what it means to be an instructor.

Is a NAIT instructor just there to read Power Point slides? Or do NASA members contribute more than that?

Read more about NAIT's proposal to change the nature of our responsibility and work.
NAIT wants to change the wording of Article 53 in our collective agreement from:
  • Current Wording: "The Institute recognizes that the primary responsibility for instructional design and delivery rests with academic staff."
  • to this:
  • Proposed Wording: "NAIT recognizes instructors covered by this Agreement engage in instructional delivery and curriculum development."

NAIT is actively trying to replace NASA members with a lower paid class of instructors.

NAIT has created a new type of instructor - Instructional Assistants (IA2s). They are not NASA members (although they are often equally-qualified), and they make significantly less money than NASA members.

Read more about IA2s

In some new proposed programs, NAIT's plan is for IA2s to do more than 40% of the teaching. These programs have already been brought forth to Academic Council.

  • IA2s are AUPE members who have a maximum salary that maxes out at what would be step 7 (out of 17) on the NASA salary grid.
  • Instructional Assistants "Ones", the original type of Instruction Assistants who helped NASA instructors do marking, were a welcome addition to the instructional experience. Unfortunately, NAIT has escalated the situation by creating a new type of Instruction Assistant that all-of-a-sudden is being given the ability to teach.

NAIT refuses to add ESL Instructors to our collective agreement.

NAIT's Board of Governors has designated ESL (English as a Second Language) as academic staff, but NAIT is insisting on keeping them low-paid contract workers.

NAIT won't accept guardrails for Generative AI

The new AI systems are great, but shouldn't their work be supervised, executed, and validated by NAIT Academic Staff? NAIT has rejected any wording about AI in the collective agreement.

Read more about our AI wording proposal

The NASA bargaining team asked NAIT to agree to a Letter of Understanding (LOU) regarding AI usage, and NAIT refused.

Here is the LOU that NAIT refused to consider or sign on to.